Opinion: Fighting over first-world problems

Beverly Akerman, Special to The Gazette05.28.2012

It seems no matter how generous Quebec makes its social programs, people find things to complain about, Beverly Akerman says. An example: university tuition fees of less than $2,200 a year. Students are opposing a modest increase in that amount.

Note: This is a corrected version of an earlier story. Correction appended below.

MONTREAL - We may have crappier weather here, but Quebec’s social climate should be enviable to the rest of Canada, what with free college education, more generous and flexible maternity leave, paternity leave, $7-per-day daycare, pharmacare, and so on.

Unfortunately, the problem with generous social programs is they’re never quite generous enough.

A while back I read a piece by a Quebec mother who was frustrated because she was home alone (i.e. without her children) the final months of her maternity leave. Apparently her daycare enrolled children yearly, starting in September. But the woman’s maternity leave did not end until January. She’d been offered spots for both her children starting in September. The daycare wouldn’t allow her to just pay for the spots for a few months, starting in January. (Long waiting lists, you know.) So despite the fact that she wanted to care for her children at home until returning to work, she was “forced” to enrol them in daycare full-time several months early. This woman was mighty steamed.

First-world problems.

Twenty-five years ago, I returned to work after a 16-week maternity leave. My son had only sleeping through the night for three weeks. A departmental secretary told me that a generation earlier, she’d been forced to quit her job as soon as she “showed.” She didn’t begrudge me my 16-week mat leave; she just wanted me to know, as I was complaining, that I was forgetting how good I had it.

Quebec’s first-world problems keep on coming.

Take our student strike. After the usual endless prodding and consultation, the provincial government declared a 75-per-cent increase in university tuition over five years, to bring the students’ costs to 1968 levels when adjusted for inflation. Today’s average annual tuition is $2,168; in five years it will be $3,793.

Less than $2,200. That’s what it costs right now to go to university chez nous. Even at McGill.

Unfortunately, the proposed increase – $325 annually – was too much for some Quebec students. So they’ve been “on strike” for more than 100 days.

First-world problems.

The student movement had clearly jumped the shark by April 24, when a visiting candidate for president of Concordia University was shouted down by “striking” students there. The totalitarian underpinnings of the striking, protesting minority – shouting down dissent, refusing secret-ballot voting, smashing windows and cars, disobeying legal injunctions to let classes resume, disrupting classes and intimidating those in attendance, demonstrating in front of the premier’s home, rioting, and allegedly setting off smoke bombs on the métro system – were made as plain as the noses the students were cutting off to spite themselves.

Some of the manifs have seen an estimated 250,000 people hit the streets. Some students may not graduate. Dispirited others have dropped out. Another recent casualty was the 14-year career of Education Minister Line Beauchamp and “good cop” strategy – to spread the pain over seven years, and to set up committees (including students) to search for savings at universities that’d be passed along to students (an administrative nightmare). The strikers are supported and encouraged by opposition politicians, organized labour, entertainers and professors, all wearing the movement’s red-square symbol.

The latest government salvo is Bill 78, “An Act to enable students to receive instruction from the post-secondary institutions they attend.” Imagine having to pass such a law! It requires eight hours’ notice and the route of demonstrations, and includes large penalties for student unions or organizations that prevent others from attending classes. The usual suspects call it the worst attack on civil liberties since the War Measures Act.

Spring has gloriously sprung in Montreal. But despite the good weather, Quebec is still slogging through the winter of its discontent. The Charbonneau-commission hearings into allegations of corruption in the construction industry are under way, another ring in the circus that defines public life here. But our beloved festival season – Festival TransAmériques, the Circus Arts Festival, the Francofolies, the jazziest, Nuits d’Afrique, Just for Laughs, film festivals, etc. – beckons. Ah, summer in Montreal: could anything be finer?

It’s enough to convince anyone of the truth in the immortal words of Louis C.K.: “Everything’s amazing. And nobody’s happy.”

* Beverly Akerman is a Montreal writer. Her debut collection of short fiction, The Meaning of Children, is available at amazon.com.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Bill 78 requires protesters to give 24 hours' notice of a demonstration. In fact, the law requires eight hours' notice.

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